


Chapter Six: Ben

by obscurityofphylum



Series: Extra Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven [4]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben Hargreeves Centric, Implied/Referenced Drug Abuse, Reginald Hargreeves’ A+ Parenting, Vanya’s book, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25927711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obscurityofphylum/pseuds/obscurityofphylum
Summary: Ben's story may be the most tragic of us all.Little Number Six was always the peacemaker. Ben was always very calm and quiet, shy by nature. He was the island amidst the violent sea, the refuge for all of us. He kept us together, and his death broke us apart.
Series: Extra Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1800355
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	Chapter Six: Ben

_Ben's story may be the most tragic of us all._

_Little Number Six was always the peacemaker. Ben was always very calm and quiet, shy by nature. He was the island amidst the violent sea, the refuge for all of us. He kept us together, and his death broke us apart._

_Ben was the one who dreamed the most. I can still see him curled up in the windowsill, looking up at the stars far past our bedtime. He was soft-hearted, and our father didn't like that. But, he was also incredibly impressionable, which our father used to his advantage._

_Ben was closest to Klaus growing up. They were bonded together by a mutual fear of their powers, which they thought more of a curse than a blessing._

_We were three years old when his powers revealed themselves, though The Horror was somewhat smaller and easier to control then. Our lives didn't change, as most of his training was singular to avoid injury._

_Pogo, our father's assistant, was the closest thing he had to an attachment that wasn't one of us. Like Diego with Grace, Ben looked up to Pogo. Ben took to reading like a duck to water, so they bonded over literature. Whenever Ben was sick or hurting from The Horror, Pogo was always there to deliver a fresh stack of books from the library to Ben's room._

_He was always there, no matter what. He was there when Diego's anger got the best of him, when Klaus fell into drugs, and every other event that led to the downfall of the Academy. It didn't matter if we treated him badly, his loyalty to his family was unwavering._

_The Horror hurt him. It grew stronger day by day, and something tells me that Ben always knew he wouldn't be able to control it. Even when we were young, his eyes had a sad sense of doom in them. He knew the day would come when he would summon the monster and the monster would refuse to be caged again._

_He was so caring, so gentle. Ben was undoubtedly the kindest out of all of us. His heart wasn't touched by greed like Allison and Klaus, nor resentment like Five and Diego. He was just pure, and undeserving of any of our father's treatment._

_Our father didn't care how The Horror affected Ben. He only saw the way it stopped criminals, not the way it was killing Ben from the inside out, both mentally and physically._

_Ben was sick often when we were kids because of The Horror's effects on his body. He would cry himself to sleep from pain, the way it would churn like a storm inside of him. There was nothing we could do to make it better, so we'd just sit with him and try to distract him by talking for hours on end._

_It didn't matter how we felt about each other as a group, Ben was the one connection we all had. As soon as he was in the equation, our emotions seemed to neutralize. Even Diego and Luther put aside their differences when they saw that Ben needed them._

_Mentally, The Horror wasn't much easier on him. He was traumatized by it, and each mission only got harder on him. The weight of the monster's fatalities bore down on him, and as a young child I can't even imagine how that felt._

_A few weeks before his last mission, he opened up to me. He told me that he felt as if he—not The Horror—was the monster. That will stick with me forever. Our father dehumanized my brother so much that he couldn't tell the difference between himself and his powers._

_I don't blame Ben for feeling that way; The Horror_

_was a beast like no other, and Ben was just its keeper. Our father was determined to make both Ben and The Horror his circus animals, and when The Horror retaliated, Ben was the victim._

_We were seventeen when it happened. I don't know the details of the mission. All I know is that when they returned, Ben was rushed to the infirmary with a gaping hole in his chest. The Horror had finally broken free of its chains, Luther had said. Ben's desire to please our father by being the perfect soldier had led him to his death._

_I'll never forget the way Allison had screamed and fallen to her knees when our mother had walked out of the operating room, shaking her head sadly. She didn't need to say anything to confirm our fears. We all knew deep down that he was gone. The funeral was two weeks later, in early December._

_Ben's death broke all of us, but not as badly as it did Klaus. sometimes I wonder if Klaus can truly see Ben, or if it's a hallucination from the years of drug abuse. Either way, Klaus went off the deep end when they returned from that mission without Ben._

_There wasn't anything holding us together after Ben's demise. We fell even further apart than we already were, deserting the house and the memories of our brother that were left behind._

_Sometimes I'm afraid I'll forget the little things: the sound of his laugh, his favorite food. The way he'd curl up in the library for hours on end with a pile of novels. They're small, but they're all the things that made him more a Ben than a Number Six._

_Ben was the only sibling who didn't see me as an outlier. He treated me equally, as a sister and not a spectator. With his death, I felt the last of my worth at the Academy fade._


End file.
